Dear Prime Minister Blair,

I am sure that daily you receive many hundreds of letters which berate you for your pivotal role in the unmitigated human catastrophe which continues to unfold in Iraq. Rather than simply add another letter to this large pile, I thought that I would offer you a potential solution which may help to extract you and our troops, but most importantly the Iraqi civilians from this epic disaster.

As you may be aware, you are a popular personality amongst the American public, indeed you are considerably more popular than the current president. Your unwavering public support for GW Bush has added massive amounts of credibility to his policies. Your continued endorsements and frequent face to face meetings have propped up a deeply unpopular leader at critical points in his term. Your public and utterly consistent support for the US Administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East has added credibility to a thoroughly discredited group of policy makers who routinely produce laughably primitive and child like strategies with which to engage the world around them.

In short Sir, your continued support of this US administration is highly valuable to them and may even be critical to them exerting any form of policy leverage over the Republican party’s remaining Senators and Congressmen and effectively governing the remainder of the president’s term. In return, over the last 5 years President Bush has been less than effective at meeting your agenda requirements, things like a balanced approach to the Palestinian conflict, a world trade deal or the closure of Guantanamo bay prison. In point of fact the US government have politely done nothing whatsoever to accommodate your point of view or policies. This is why people call you a poodle. Your protestations that the US is the most powerful country in the world and a force for good, ignores the fact that the current government also represents an awful lot of what is evil in the world.

But I digress, the object of this letter is to encourage you to order the withdrawal of all UK military personnel from Iraq as a matter or urgency. The military situation in Iraq is futile, the Pandora’s box of ethnic hatred was opened the minute the Iraqi government was overthrown and the limitation of the US and UK’s military might is obvious to everyone but the American Neo-conservatives. Regardless of whether we wish it to be so or not, the fact is that Coalition has been comprehensively defeated in its war against the insurgent groups in Iraq and it now justifiably represents a focal point for a population which is suffering under incredible injustice and violence. The US military forces have demonstrated incredible incompetence in counter insurgency warfare by showing an almost total disregard for the lives of ordinary Iraqis when engaging “suspected terrorists”. Sending additional troops as per the President’s latest plan will not change the fact that the US forces do not have the confidence of the population and are unable to bring about any form of genuine and long lasting stability or political resolution. The fantastically naïve notion that such an ethnically suppressed and brutalised population could form trusted and impartial policing and judicial systems so that “we can stand down as the Iraqis stand up” in a matter of a few years is a delusion. Collectively, we have deeply scarred and damaged Iraq and our continued presence is not making things better.

It should be apparent to you (as it is to the majority of the country) that President Bush will only order the withdrawal of US troops only when it is politically expedient for him to do so. His administration has no other consideration and as such the killing of coalition troops will, under your current policy, only end when GW Bush’s ego tells him the time is right. Therefore it is necessary to either a) show some leadership and unilaterally and immediately withdraw our troops, or b) make it politically expedient for Bush to order a withdrawal, ie by telling him that you are going to withdraw UK forces with or without his blessing. Sitting around waiting for the geniuses in the White House to come up with a strategy with more prospects than “Stay the Course” is going to be a long wait. Claiming that we are currently doing more good than harm is irrelevant when there is no ultimate exit strategy which does not involve further more sectarian violence and political revolution.

I urge you to bring our troops home now and maybe your actions will force the hand of an insulated and stubborn lame duck president whose primary concern is his own image and thus you just might bring about the beginning of the end of the horrendous tragedy in Iraq.

Yours sincerely

AJ Bladderwait